I shake my head at Nico and mouth: [Can’t trust him.]
Nico mouths in return. [I know.]
Carter’s voice breaks in again, “Guess we have to do it the hard way. Open the door right fucking now and we’ll only wipe your memories and send you to a prison colony instead of executing you.”
“You won’t do anything of the sort.” I say, spitting the words out. “You just said you need us.”
“We want to get the job done faster, and it’s easier with your cooperation. We could do it without you, if we must.”
“Bullshit. If our cooperation weren’t critical, you’d have stormed the ship by now.”
“If you believe nothing else I say, believe this: If you don’t help fix the timeline, you’ll face a tribunal for your crimes. I’ll be the government’s star witness. Do you really want to stay on my bad side?”
The lump in my throat is back. Jackson Carter is no friend of mine—or Nico’s—and he does have the power to make our lives shittier than they are right now.
“Commander Garcia,” Carter continues, “We didn’t hack all of your ship’s systems as a gesture of good faith, proof we want to work together. But you leave me no choice,” Carter pauses. “Retraction of that good faith gesture starts right...now.”
Nico lifts his hands from the command console, frantically scanning the controls as they erupt in a flash of rapid-fire color. “Damn it to hell.” His fingers fly across the display panel. “Those are unauthorized sub-routines trawling through the ship’s systems. They have the computer access codes.” He works the display panel feverishly, trying to slow the attack. “Betty, throw in more sub-net mask layers to slow them down.
“Acknowledged, Commander, honey,” she replies.
The rhythm of the display screens shifts to a dance at breakneck speed between the hackers’ attempts to breach our systems and Betty’s smooth countermeasures. These assholes don’t know what they’re up against. She’s going to wipe the circuit boards with their guts.
“C’mon, baby.” I feel the need to offer moral support for the only sentient being on the ship who can keep our doors locked.
Nico grimaces. “It it’s a temporary measure, at best. It won’t keep them out forever.”
“At the risk of stating the obvious,” I say, jumping up to stand behind his commander’s chair. “we have to do more than just delay them from breaking in.”
“If you have a better idea, I’d love to hear it,” Nico says through gritted teeth as he continues to pound on the control panel.
“Time jump.”
Working frantically to trying to stem the tide of the cyber-attack, he only manages a quick glance over his shoulder. “The fuck you say?”
“How does a lifetime prison sentence with a side of amnesia sound to you?” I shout.
He grimaces, then shakes his head. “What if the time portals aren’t working. Screwing history the way you did could mean time travel hasn’t been invented in what is no longer our future. Carter’s right. We could be stuck here.”
“Only one way to find out.” I reach past his shoulder and type the criteria into the computer. “Follow these geographic and temporal coordinates.”
Nico squints at the data and moans. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“Go, Nico. Do it!” I say, sliding into the co-pilot’s seat and belting myself in.
Carter says, “In case you were wondering, I’m not the only one here. I have more Observers standing by to board your vessel once we break through the security codes.”
Glancing back at the hologram of Carter, I count more than a dozen soldiers have joined him, and they’re all waiting for the order to move. “Catch us first, asshole.” I reply. Then, to Nico. “I know I screwed up, but listen to me: We need time and space to figure out what went wrong. If Carter gets in here, they’ll find any excuse to kill or imprison us. If you ever trusted me before, trust me now.”
Nico takes a deep breath and mutters under his breath. “Fuck me running. I’m gonna regret this.”
“Tech team,” Carter shouts at his subordinates as our ship lifts off. “Breach the transporter controls. Get me on that ship!”
Outside the windows, the English countryside streaks by in a blur of winter gray as we race toward our time portal.
“Shit.” Nico breathes out, his eyes darting from the time portal coordinates to the display panel screen. “They’re almost in. I need you to get down to the transport pads and manually take them offline in case they break through Betty’s defenses.”
“But I don’t know—”
“I’ll walk you through it. Go!”
I unlatch the buckle on my restraint system and stumble to the ladder leading down to the lower deck just as the ship veers starboard, tossing me into a wall.
“Sorry,” Nico calls out. “Evasive maneuver. They’re on our ass.”
A quick slide down the ladder, a few stumbling steps to the right, and I’m at the transport pads. I tap the communication link on the wall panel.
“I’m in position. What now?”
“Open the control panel to the right of the pads. Tap the door release. It’s a small, square glass screen in the lower right corner.”
I open the panel door. “Got it. What’s next?”
“Second row of data displays from the bottom, there are two blue slider controls on the left side, two green in the middle, and two brown chips on the far right end of the next row down.”
My fingers float over the edges of the small chips; the chips are color-coded, just as he said. “Got ‘em.”
The ship pitches to the left, tossing me backward. I can’t hold my balance and sprawling out on the floor. I have to crawl back to the control panel. “What the hell was that?” I ask.
“Goddamn it, they’re chasing us!” Nico replies. “Hold on down there.”
One of the transporter pads glows blue. “The transporter pad is activated.” A faint
